Robert Browning
(1812-1889)

Robert Browning grew up precocious, literary, and intent on becoming a great poet. But during the first half of his life, he was best known for being married to Elizabeth Barrett. When she died after fifteen years of happy and reclusive life in Florence, he returned to London and began publishing his own works to great acclaim. His irony, ambiguity, and psychological detail gained him a new audience, but he never found a home again. He traveled restlessly for more than twenty-five years, writing a few stanzas a day, and died abroad at seventy-seven.

book Immortal Poets: Their Lives and Verse, by Christopher Burns